The dance of ashes

[Mitch]

You hate what you love.

In all extremes we feel the needle point at either end as extacy and revulsion in an instant.

To understand is bliss and bleeding.

Each one a thing torn by what we are.

Before my daddy died we vowed he should be buried - however else would we have a place to dance?

So he got cremated.

My sister and cousin picked him up in his plastic bottle and drove to the nearest pub to toast his memory sitting snuggly on the floor of the Toyota outside in the sun. Just as he left us when we were kids.

We took his bank balance and what was left over from funerals-r-us (no flowers) we dedicated to a wake.

We emailed everyone of his friends and relations to come share a parting glass. Thank god none of them even know what a computer looks like - so the budget was ours. Who said justice is blind!

Then off to the rustic resort in the picturesque valley beneath the cliff down which my brother fell.

And under his shade we made merry and re-untited the wound of his passing.

Then to daddy.

Early the next hung-over morning up we climbed. Respect can only be expressed in pain.

Up, Up to that place where the favourite sun went reaching for a his set on wings of lead. There to scatter his favourite dad.

I had found him in a gunny sack wedged between the crevice while daddy was shattered and left the task to a sensitive soul. No needle too sharp for me. Although young, the blood is long dried as the blood I found on his final shattering. The spring of youth is all glass and edges and shards of our day-to-day plastic.

In the end the ants have all. And the maggots.

As we small troop of revellers climbed the pass to the fateful fall, the day-to-day tourists abseiling and again untill wine and steak at the lodge, or soulful boarding of the long train back to the data mills on Monday.

So we small dozen climbed in a dozen different shades of pain. So small.

Untill, at last, the fateful brink was beneath our feet. Dancing was on out minds, but somehow could not reach our feet as we prized and banged on that plastic cript till at last daddy's ashes saw the clouds obscured sun again (with the aid of a Swiss army knife). As always.

With each new passing of abseilers our spirits lifted. Always was the man an inconvenience. Much as we detested him, we would be loth to inflict him upon unsuspecting foreigners, however pathalogically athletic they may be.

And so a calm came to pass. A following wind carried the man far out into deep where a rising gust arrayed him in grey splendour agains the dour backdrop. Grey upon grey upon subdued green, and the hush, hush of wind amongst the leaves. An infinity of partings.

We became silent. Was it respect or awe? Was it just the reminder of day-to-day-grey at the end of the day?

For daddy to accost a stranger was never a thing of wonder. He did in life as in death arrayed on the shoulders of the next batch of obsessive climbers that emerged accross the bluff. Unknowing bedraped in my daddies last joke.

The day ended in laughter.

So should it have done.

I still wonder who the joke was on. And, yet stil,l I am drawn to dance on clifftops.

[peteinmn]

Mitch,

Another great piece of imagery and emotion.

More please.

[Innocent Bystander]

Well Done, Mitch!

[anniemcu]

Excellent!... inspiring.

Mixed memories.

The death of Dean.
Aye.
I shall finally feel the whole of it.
Inhale aghast, a gasp of ash.
Irritation, remembered,
forgotten, forgiven, forgone.
A freeing of spirits.
His and mine.
May his soul find more peace
in the next life
than he gave in this.

[Flyingcursor]

Where did this version of "Mitch" come from? Keep it up. An awesome mix of humor (humour) and pathos.

Very nice.

[cowtime]

Is there more where that came from? 'cause that was mighty fine.